Objectives Based on the clinical characteristics of atherosclerosis in? traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and Western medicine, this paper analyzes the common animal models of atherosclerosis(AS), and the coincidence of the models with clinical characteristics was scored, in the hope of providing new ideas and reference for studying animal models of AS. Methods This paper reviewed the varieties, modeling methods, modeling principles and characteristics of common animal models of AS. Moreover, according to the clinical diagnostic criteria and symptom characteristics, the similarity of the common animal models was analyzed. Results High-fat feeding type, mechanical injury combined with high-fat feeding type, genetic engineering combined with high-fat feeding type, chemical induction combined with high-fat feeding type and the models of AS combining Chinese clinical syndrome and western disease are widely established in animal models of AS. Comparative analysis result showed that balloon injury combined with high fat feeding type, ApoE receptor knockout mouse combined with high-fat diet type and phlegm and blood stasis type in models of disease and symptom combination showed a comparatively high level of clinical agreement between Chinese and western medicine. Conclusions Presently, most of the animal models of AS had the high degree of coincidence with western medicine, evaluation criterion is dominated by the western medicine as well, which lack of the combination between disease and syndrome, so as to hinder development of concept of Wholism and treatment by differentiation of syndromes in TCM. Therefore, establishing the exact and high coincidence degree animal model, which combines the disease and its TCM symptoms, is the top priority of studying the prevention and treatment of atherosclerosis.